In recent years, it has been difficult to perform design layout of a substrate with increase in a circuit size and densification. For example, several parts having a large number of terminals as much as several thousands are arranged on a printed substrate and the number of sections to be wired reaches several tens of thousands. In addition, layout design of the substrate has functional constraint and constraint in manufacturing in some cases. When a designer performs layout design of the substrate, the designer examines arrangement positions of parts in consideration of the functional constraint and the constraint in manufacturing so as to examine whether wiring among the arranged parts is capable of being performed.
There are techniques for supporting the layout design on the substrate. For example, there is a technique for supporting the layout design by using network information that relates terminals of respective parts to be connected. Conventional examples are described in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 08-180091, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 06-236419, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2009-122764.
With the conventional techniques, layout design is incapable of being performed unless positions of the terminals of the parts to be arranged on the substrate and the terminals of the parts to be connected are defined.
If the layout design is performed after the positions of the terminals of the parts and the terminals of the parts to be connected are defined, for example, the designed parts are incapable of being arranged on the substrate and rework to the design of the parts occurs in some cases. In order to shorten a design period, it is preferable that the layout design of the substrate can be performed at an early stage during design of the parts.